


that which is forgotten

by Himmelreich



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27921844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich
Summary: Happy holidays! I hope even in this year of trials and tribulation, this fic can be a bit of a bright spot to you :)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casinoquality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casinoquality/gifts).



> Happy holidays! I hope even in this year of trials and tribulation, this fic can be a bit of a bright spot to you :)

Tanuma remembered once having caught a commercial on tv for a painkiller that claimed that there were 37 different kinds of headaches. While he had been somewhat sceptical of how you could differentiate between so many types initially, on this day, he felt quite confident he had suffered through at least ten in the past 23 hours. What had started as a faint sense of pressure around his temples the previous afternoon had turned into a throbbing persistent ache overnight. Sleep unfortunately hadn’t magically fixed it, although he woke up with less of a pronounced ache and more of a dull weight in his head that made everything sound as if filtered through a thick blanket. School with its commotion and need to focus hadn’t exactly helped, either, and by the time lunch break began, it had once again worsened to include sudden bursts of pain, as if someone was stabbing at his brain. 

Deciding he had at least made a valiant effort to not tarnish his attendance record by going to school this morning at all, Tanuma asked his class rep to excuse him for afternoon classes, and started out on his way home.

It was a bright autumn day outside, almost summery, still, but there was a haze over the mountains in the distance that Tanuma had learned to understand as signs of an incoming change of weather. Maybe that was the source of the headaches, he thought, trudging along the familiar streets. To this day, he couldn’t for sure name a reason for them each time, since without someone like Natsume to confirm it for him, knowing for sure whether it was Youkai related was impossible. Sometimes, a door suddenly opening was just due to it not having been closed properly, and sometimes a headache was just something to do with atmospheric pressure or a cold - not everything had to do with forces beyond human knowledge. Considering his constitution had gotten better in the past year they had been living here, much to the joy of his father, and knowing that Yatsuhara seemed to teem with Youkai, he could try to ease his anxiety that way. 

As he approached the bridge across the river, he saw a woman leaning against the railing, looking out over the the course of the stream towards the mountains. She was wearing a bright orange windbreaker and hiking boots. Even with his spirit dampened by his current condition, following her line of sight, he had to agree that it was a lovely day to be taking a stroll in this area. The forests on the hills appeared like a colourful quilt thrown on the landscape, woven in hues of red and gold, the river carrying single leaves downstream like paper boats.

He had almost caught up to her when a sudden flash of pain made his knees buckle, his teeth clenching at the sudden intensity of it. He only noticed that he must have stumbled when he felt someone’s hands grab hold of him, keeping him from falling.

“Are you alright?”

Tanuma blinked against the water in his eyes, trying to breathe slowly and at regular intervals. The intense pain had passed as quickly as it arrived, but it left an unpleasant anticipation of return in its wake. As the blurriness in his sight lessened, he found himself up close and personal with the violently bright orange jacket. Lifting his head a bit, he found the woman looking at him, frowning. Her eyes were so dark that it was hard to distinguish pupils from iris.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to smile in a way that he hoped was encouraging. “I am feeling a bit under the weather today.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement.” Her hold on his arm didn’t loosen. “You’re pale as a sheet of paper. Are you on your way home?”

“Yes, I left school early.”

“In your constitution, you should have asked someone to pick you up.”

“It’s not far,” Tanuma explained, awkwardly. “Just beyond the hill over there, the temple at Yatsuhara.”

The woman made a noncommittal sound, but did let go of him. Tanuma wanted to bow in thanks and then make a quick exit, feeling embarrassed for nearly collapsing on a total stranger, but he had barely moved before a second wave of pain crashed through him.

He was only vaguely aware of the woman’s arm around his shoulder supporting him as they made their way up towards the temple, all remaining brainpower focussed on the bare minimum task of putting one foot in front of the other. Everything was as if transmitted with lag, and he put up no resistance as the stranger led the way into his house and made him lie down a blanket in the living room. Something cold and wet was placed on his forehead and eyes, and Tanuma sighed. Then, a hand pushed up his head just a bit, and a cup pressed to his lips.

“Drink,” the stranger said. “It’ll help.”

Tanuma was in no state to refuse. The liquid was warm and sweet, but left a peculiar tingling sensation on his tongue after he swallowed. The relief was almost instantaneous, the ache in his head slowing down to a pale shadow of its former self, and the sensation of stumbling along behind his own body lessened. 

He reached up to push the wet kitchen towel from his eyes, and found the stranger returning from the kitchen with a glass of water. 

“You should keep that on,” she told him, kneeling down by his side and offering him the water. “It’ll help, too.”

“Thank you, I’m feeling a lot better all ready.” Tanuma meant it.

“I’m glad to hear that. Apologies for intruding without permission.” She pointed behind herself, at the kitchen.

“Oh, no, not at all! I am sorry for troubling you with having to take care of me in the first place.” Tanuma could feel the heat of embarrassment rising up his neck, mercifully combatted by the cool towel.

“I don’t mind, I wasn’t in a hurry, anyway.” Now that she was close and his headache receding, Tanuma got a better first good look at the stranger. He had never been good at guessing at adults’ ages, but she didn’t look much older than thirty. Her dark hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and her expression was absolutely calm.

“I’m Tanuma Kaname” he introduced himself, bowing his head. “Once again, thank you very much for helping me.”

“Kuromatsu.” She gave a curt nod. “Do you get these headaches often?”

“Sometimes. I guess I’m more prone to getting him than most.” He tried to say it lightly, but her serious mien didn’t change.

“When did this particular one start?”

“Yesterday afternoon.” 

For just a moment, something flashed across the woman’s face, but it was gone before he could make sense of it.

“In any case, you should rest up for today, Tanuma-kun.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Not quite, but through my line of work I did pick up on some ways to deal with certain problems. Your kind of affliction is much more common than you might think.”

Headaches were known to be one of the the most common ailments, Tanuma thought, a bit confused. Maybe his was one of the 37 that were considered more rare, then?

Kuromatsu got up and left the room without a comment. He heard the sound of rummaging from near the entrance, then she returned and set down an old, somewhat rusted tea caddy by his side. 

“Keep it”, she said. “You seem like you need it. Half a tea spoon on a cup of hot water, and it’ll help with those headaches.”

“I can’t possibly accept this,” Tanuma rose in protest, but found himself pushed firmly back down by his shoulder.

“I insist. I don’t get headaches myself, so it’s more useful in your hands. Well, take care.”

That said, she turned to leave.

“Thank you!” Tanuma called after her. He heard the front door first open, then shut. The silence of the empty house was only broken by the occasional drip from the kitchen faucet - his father still hadn’t gotten around to having it be fixed - and the rustling of leaves outside. He sighed and let himself sink back into the soft blanket, staring at the ceiling. 

Maybe it was a side effect of the herbal medicine, but he now felt comfortably tired, far from the earlier pressing exhaustion. Just as he was about to doze off, he caught a blur of movement from the corner of his eyes. In a corner of the ceiling, he could make out the long familiar reflection of the pond outside the veranda, the dazzling play of sun on the surface of water that was invisible to the human eye. 

The shadows of the koi were unusually clear today.


	2. Chapter 2

“I can’t believe you of all people got 89 points on that math test!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?! You’re just jealous!”

“I still wonder if you didn’t use a cheat sheet, there’s no way you’d get more than 60 without it. Isn’t that right, Natsume?”

Natsume laughed, but brought up his hands in a defensive move.

“I wouldn’t know, Kitamoto.”

Nishimura took Natsume’s diplomatic answer as backing his stance, gleefully turning on their friend.

“Like I said! You’re just jealous!”

Their squabbling continued as they made their way across the school’s front yard, and Natsume let the normalcy of it all wash over him, smiling to himself. His own grades were nothing to write home about, and even if all the youkai related trouble he had to deal with definitely was a contributor, at this point he also had to own up to some subjects not being his forte. It was a nice break, however, this kind of school life - chatting with classmates, discussing the merits of ditching homework, walking home after school. It had been almost a year since he moved to this town, but it still seemed too good to be true, sometimes.

“Hey, look, it’s your fat cat here to pick you up, Natsume!”

He started, pulled back into the present moment, and watched on as Nishimura crouched down by the school gate, trying to pat Sensei’s head. The youkai dodged him with one swift move, running and leaping to settle on Natsume’s shoulder. While Kitamoto said something about how cats were good judges of character, Natsume’s ears were focussed on Sensei speaking instead.

“I just received word from the Yatsuhara crowd. Seems a very strong youkai made their way here yesterday, and they agree that one’s bad news. So we’re going straight home before you get yourself involved in something stupid again, you hear me?”

His expression didn’t look like there was room for negotiations, his claws digging through the thick wool of Natsume’s coat ever so slightly.

“Sorry, you two, I just realised I promised to be home earlier to help Touko-san with some yard work,” Natsume called out to his friends, already on the move. “See you tomorrow!”

He didn’t wait for their reply, jogging down the familiar path home.

“Is it a dangerous youkai?”

“The remnants of their presence sure weren’t pleasant,” Sensei said, still perching on his shoulder. “Let’s hope they’re just passing through and won’t get us in any trouble.”

“You said the Yatsuhara crowd told you, did anything happen to them?”

“Not yet, I don’t think. Dunno, there’s a lot of them, I don’t think they did a headcount.”

Natsume came to an abrupt stop at the crossroads beyond the river, turning his head to glare at his bodyguard.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t have to worry about the strong ones, and even the mid-ranks should be fine, probably, inspite of being dumb as a bag of rocks.” Sensei dismissively waved his paw. “Like I said, maybe that youkai is just passing through and nothing will happen to any of them, but-”

Natsume resumed running, making a sharp left turn, right towards the path leading to Yatsuhara.

“Did you listen to a single thing I said, you idiot?” Sensei complained, digging his claws into his shoulders a bit more aggressively. Natsume ignored him, breathing heavily as he made his way uphill through the narrow paths in the woods.

His body was vibrating with the long familiar sense of anxiety that came with worry for others, and now that he paid attention to his surroundings on this different level, he, too, could feel an unpleasant presence, however faint it might be. Its intensity ebbed and flowed, as if he was experiencing the ripples radiating from a stone dropped in a pond. As he approached a small clearing, Natsume stopped, frowning.

Something bright had caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He leaned down to fish it out of the thick carpet of colourful leaves covering the ground. It was a scrap of blank paper, torn in half, but still showing that there used to be a very distinct shape to it. Natsume felt as if his stomach dropped for a moment.

“Urgh, shikigami,” Sensei remarked, ears flattening against his back as his eyes narrowed in disgust.

“Do you think it’s Natori-san’s?”

“I can’t tell from just that little bit of leftover energy. Exorcists are all pretty similar to me, anyway.”

“I see.”

Natsume almost wanted to say that he was sure Natori-san would have contacted him, had he been in the area, but before he could speak, he already knew that wasn’t quite true. While he trusted the man not to go out of his way to clash wish Natsume’s way of coexisting with the local youkai, had he been hired to conduct a job capturing a more dangerous youkai, he might specifically go out of his way not to get him involved. It was impossible to be absolutely sure of what another person might do or think, frustratingly so.

His fingers tightened around the paper.

“Let’s hope it’s not the Matoba clan”, he said, resuming his foray, albeit slower this time, and more careful.

“I’ll eat that brat next time”, Sensei growled. Natsume did not bother to chide him for it.

The sound of leaves crunching underfoot made them both flinch and tense, ready to face any danger. Up ahead, coming towards them, was a woman in a violently orange windbreaker, stopping in surprise as she took note of them. Her eyes scanned Natsume, then Sensei, then landed on his right fist, still clenched around the rests of the shikigami.

“Good afternoon,” she said, slowly, nodding her head in greeting.

“Sensei?” Natsume whispered, many questions in just one word. There was something vaguely unsettling about the person in front of him, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“No, it’s not her,” Sensei replied, jumping of his shoulder and taking stance in front of him, protectively. “But that shikigami are yours, aren’t they?”

“Ah, yes.” She reached into her pocket, pulling out one that was not torn into shreds. It came to life on her palm, righting itself up like a living thing. “That would be the case.”

She clearly could feel the tension from Natsume and Sensei because the paper fell back limp and lifeless as she declared: “No reason to be alarmed, my business here is finished. I mean no harm to you.”

“Business?” Natsume asked, on edge.

“I was following a youkai that escaped me upstream to this region. I made sure to exorcise it. With that, my job here is done.”

Natsume exchanged a brief look with Sensei. So the youkai the Yatsuhara crowd had been anxious about had been dealt with already, that was good news. However, strange exorcists were always to be seen with a bit of caution, that much Natsume had learned over all his previous encoutners.

“So you’ll leave now without exorcising any of the resident youkai?”

“I have no reason to meddle with those that do not harm humans, so I’m on my way out. I just wanted to drop by the temple again, to check on that boy there.”

Natsume felt as if a bucket of ice water had been emptied over his head. He had ran past Sensei and up to the stranger before he could even process he had moved at all.

“Did something happen to him? Is he all right? What-”

“Natsume!” Sensei called after him, but he was too caught up in worry to care if it was dangerous.

The woman blinked, seemingly barely taken aback at all by his behaviour.

“He’s fine,” she said calmly. “It seems he’s quite sensitive to matters of the spirit world, though. He had a strong headache following this youkai’s arrival, but I made sure he took some medicine to combat the issue. Nevertheless, I wanted to ensure he was feeling better before leaving.”

Natsume exhaled a shaky breath, suddenly feeling almost boneless as the spike of panic vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“Thank goodness”, he murmured, turning to Sensei. “I’ll go check on him, you make sure she’ll get to leave without issues.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, already taking off to make sure his precious friend was unhurt.


	3. Chapter 3

“You must like doing things unnecessarily complicatedly, don’t you?”

The woman turned towards him, expression blank.

“What do you mean?”

“It would have been much easier for you to destroy youkai using your own powers instead of relying on these exorcist techniques.” Madara narrowed his eyes. “And yet.”

She blinked, then sighed.

“I suppose someone of your caliber can tell pretty easily, right.”

“Of course, did you think I was blind?” Madara growled, shifting into his true form. “Don’t underestimate me, brat.”

She did not look the least bit intimidated, merely tilting her head back to maintain eye contact as he towered over her. But then again, he had already ascertained pretty clearly that this fellow wasn’t all right in the head in the first place.

“Well, you’re right, I could easily have dealt with that spirit in our usual way, but that’s not why I’m doing this.”

“Pray tell, then, why’s a youkai running around playacting being an exorcist?”

She remained silent for a moment, eyes remaining as black voids.

“Sure,” she then said, leaning back against the nearest tree trunk, “you might actually understand. I used to be worshipped as a protective deity in a village in the mountains, a long, long time ago.”

Her gaze drifted off, beyond what was in front of her, to a different place, a different time. Madara patiently waited for her to continue.

“Living conditions there were harsh, and after a particularly bad winter, the villagers decided to relocate to the valley. All of them just packed up, and left, as simple as that.”

“And you remained.”

Her focus snapped back to him, and for the first time, she smiled, although there was no joy in it.

“Yes. Humans can be such fickle creatures. I watched them pack their important things, discuss about what was not valuable enough to drag all the way with them on the journey, and then witness them deeming everything about my shrine as not important enough to make the cut.” The smile remained. “Maybe they blamed me for failing to prevent the harsh winter, although I always did the best I could to protect them from more imminent disasters, but how would they know? Humans are ignorant of the powers beyond their immediate grasp. But I don’t have to tell you, surely.”

Madara remained silent. Hers was a fate that wasn’t uncommon to local deities, to become forgotten, wither away or turn vengeful, turning on any humans and spirits alike. As much as she bemoaned her fickle worshippers, as obvious it was in her story how deeply she must have yearned for their return for a while. Pitiful, he thought, gritting his teeth.

“I don’t know how long I remained in those ruins all by myself, watching the seasons, years, decades drift by. But eventually, humans came back, trying to forge a pass across the mountain. Different people, from a different age, with no knowledge of the shrine and even less respect for it.”

The iciness in her tone and the glint in her eyes left Madara with little doubt her mercifulness for humans had at that point clearly run its course. He gave a short laugh.

“And yet, they came back again and again. And one day, they sent someone to exorcise the malevolent spirit halting their progress.”

“They must have done a pretty bad job at it.”

“He didn’t even try.”

The smile was still there, but it had shifted to something softer. Madara knew that expression, he saw it every dang time Natsume released yet another precious, valuable name from the Book of Friends. It made something inside of him want to scream.

“He just came up to me and told me that he, too, would probably be in a bad mood if he was stuck somewhere all alone, but I should just have done something about it and ventured into the valley myself. He point blank told me I was stupid for not even thinking of it.” She laughed, and this time, it was genuine. “This puny human, talking like that to me! Exorcist or no, I could have squashed him. And yet, he just told me to tag along and get a change of routine. He was a complete idiot.”

“So you became his shiki?”

She shook her head.

“I wasn’t stupid enough to give my name to humans ever again, just to watch them forget it once they lose interest. He declared he’d just call me Kuromatsu, because my shrine had been built from black pine wood. Like I said, he was an idiot. And still, I ended up accompanying him on his travels, watching him deal with both youkai and humans in the same careless, lackadaisical manner.”

She fell silent, and Madara had a good idea why.

“Human lives are short”, he offered eventually.

“His name was forgotten, just as mine was. The world of humans moves on, washing away traces like waves on sand. But we can remain to remember, and keep some of those memories with us.”

“Dressing up as a human exorcist goes beyond what I’d ever consider doing,” Madara sniped.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “And yet, your attachment to that boy is just as strong.”

He felt his fur stand up in indignation.

“That’s nonsense, I’m only with him to get the Book of Friends eventually.”

“You, too, are doing things more complicatedly than necessary, then. You could just have let him run into deadly danger one time and then collect what you want, no?”

Before he could put together a fitting rebuttal, something along on the lines of that he was about to bite her smug head off, she pushed off the trunk and turned to leave.

“It’s not a bad thing, to care, even though we know that it’s ephemeral. That’s what I think, at least.” She bowed her head. “Take good care of these kids, and savour the time you have with them.”

“I don’t care!” he shouted after her, but got no reaction. Madara huffed, shaking his head to free himself from the strange sense of unease her words had brought forth. As if he needed some stray wasuregami to give him, noble youkai Madara-sama, any advice on how to deal with humans.

He looked back towards the temple, but things seemed calm. He was going to pick up his troublemaker charge later, first, he would strongarm the Yatsuhara folk into giving him some sake.

There was no point in dwelling on troublesome things like mortality and inevitability, Madara decided. He was only here for the Book of Friends, after all.


End file.
